The end of the school year is here for many of us. It is at this time of year that I am often asked about how to forward G Suite for Edu email to Gmail addresses. Some people want to do this because they only want to check one inbox during the summer. Others do this because they are moving from one district to another and need a place to store important messages in the time between jobs. In the following video I explain how to automatically forward G Suite email to a Gmail address.
If you don't want to forward work email to your personal email, you might consider using filters so that only the most important messages reach your primary inbox during the summer. Watch my video that is embedded below to learn how to create filters in your G Suite inbox.
Good morning from Maine where it almost feels like summer. The sun is trying to poke through the clouds and it's supposed to be 70F today. In other words, it should be a great day to play outside. That's exactly what I plan to do after publishing this blog post. I hope that wherever you are this weekend, you can enjoy some time outside too.
Google is constantly making updates to the services that they offer. Some of the updates are only affect the administrative side of G Suite for Education. I rarely write about those updates. Then there are updates that have a direct impact on teachers and students. Those are the ones that I usually write about. Here are six updates to Google products that were made in May and have an impact on teachers and students.
New Google Docs Formatting Options
As was announced yesterday, there are a couple of new formatting options in Google Documents. The new options include new section and page break options. You can also now adjust the margins for a section of a document without affect the margins for the rest of the document. These features are available to some users right now and will be widely available in the coming weeks.
A New Carmen Sandiego Game in Google Earth
Following up on the popularity of the Carmen Sandiego game that was released in Google Earth in March, Google added another Carmen Sandiego game to Google Earth in May. Watch my video below to see how to access the new game.
Google Sites Photo Carousels
Google Sites now has an option to include a photo carousel within your site's pages. You'll be able to insert images by uploading from your computer or importing from your Google account.
Team Drives Renamed as Shared Drives
This change was actually announced on the last day of April, but the change didn't start going into effect until May 21st. The change has already happened in some G Suite for Edu domains and is still coming soon to others.
A New Version of Google Books
The new users interface for Google Books appeared in May. What my video to see what's new and how it works.
Gmail Confidential Mode
The new confidential mode for Gmail started to appear in some domains in May. By the end of June it will be on by default in all G Suite domains. This could be a great option to use when you're emailing colleagues about issues related to students. Watch my video below to see how the confidential mode works.
Making Sense of Spelling Making Sense of Spelling is a TED-Ed lesson that explains why some words have multiple correct spellings, the relationships between words, and why not all words are spelled the way they sound.
Flippity Spelling Words
Flippity offers a great Google Sheets template that you can use to create custom, individualized spelling games for your students. Watch my video embedded below to see how you can create spelling games with Flippity's Spelling Words template.
Teach Your Monster to Read Minigames
Teach Your Monster to Read is a fun online environment in which students play games that are designed to help them improve the speed and accuracy with which they recognize letters, sounds, and words. Students play the games as friendly monster avatars that they are helping learn to read. If you want something that doesn't require any set-up time, try the minigames on Teach Your Monster to Read. Teach Your Monster to Read Minigames are games that students can play in a short amount of time and can quit at any time. The idea behind this being that students can quickly jump into a game and get a bit of practice in intervals rather than having to play through a longer game. There are six minigames that let students practice sound identification for every letter of the alphabet. There are three minigames that have a basic spelling component to them.
World's Worst Pet World’s Worst Pet is a free iPad app that contains a series of fun vocabulary games. In the app players have to help bring home Snargg, the world’s worst pet, who has run away. To get Snargg back players have to fill his food dish by learning new vocabulary words. Each of the six levels in the game contain ten dishes (each dish represents a new set of words) that can be filled. Four games are available for each dish. The games are fill-in-the-blank, synonym identification, antonym identification, and definition identification. World’s Worst Pet is designed for students in grades four through eight. The app contains a total of 1,000 vocabulary words.
Knoword Knoword is a fun and challenging game that tests your ability to match definitions to words. Knoword is played like this; you're presented with the first letter of a word, its part of speech, and the definition. You then have to fill in the correct spelling of the word. If you enter the correct word, you earn points. If you don't get it right, you lose points. Knoword is probably best suited to use by students in middle school and high school. I think many of the words would be too difficult for elementary school students and they could end up frustrated with the game.
Spell It Out Challenge Vox's Spell It Out challenge presents you with the final winning words from twenty past national spelling bees. You will hear the word pronounced then you have to type it in the spelling box to submit your answer. Before submitting your answer you can hear the word used in a sentence and see the origin of the word.
TinyTap Games
TinyTap is a service that lets you create educational games for your students to play on their iPads, Android tablets, and in their web browsers. For the most part the style of games that are created on TinyTap are identification activities in which students either choose an answer or type an answer to a question. Recently, TinyTap added the option for students to speak responses to game questions. TinyTap's Talk or Type feature lets you create activities that your students can interact with by speaking.
ABCya Spelling Games
ABCya offers hundreds of games covering a wide range of topics. The games are designed for K-6 students. One of the spelling games that you might want to try is Submarine Spelling. Submarine Spelling is a based on the Dolch Word List. Students progress through the list by hearing then spelling each word by dragging and dropping letters into the correct order. Spelling the words correctly moves students' submarines through the ocean.
It's the last day of May. Congratulations to those of you who have just finished the school year! And to those who still have some time to go, you can do it! The end is in sight.
